BEFORE: I bought a bunch of Easter candy yesterday - I need to buy at least one package of Peeps, plus the Reese's peanut butter eggs, Cadbury creme eggs, the Russell Stover marshmallow, maple, coconut, and raspberry eggs, plus a chocolate bunny or two and some Reese-ster Bunnies. This is an important step in getting my taxes done, namely the reward stage. For any task, first there's the planning stage, then the procrastination stage, then the "realization that the deadline is approaching" stage, then some more procrastination (the 2nd round is more serious, when I'm much more defiant about it), then the "I absolutely must start it now or I'll never finish it" stage, then there's the actual doing of the task, and then the reward.
Linking from "Killing Them Softly", Brad Pitt was also in "The Tree of Life" with Sean Penn (last seen in "The Thin Red Line").
THE PLOT: A secret crew of police officers works together in an effort to take down the ruthless mob king Mickey Cohen who runs Los Angeles.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Mulholland Falls" (Movie #1,392)
AFTER: More than anything, this film evokes 1987's "The Untouchables", but since it is set in L.A. and not Chicago, that also calls to mind "L.A. Confidential". But let's deal with the connections to "The Untouchables" first. An honest cop in a city of corrupt ones decides to take the fight directly to the top of the mob food chain - here represented by Mickey Cohen instead of Al Capone - and drafts an ethnically diverse squad to assist him, including one grizzled veteran, then he finds himself questioning how far outside of the typical police playbook he's willing to go to get results.
See? It's practically the same film! There's even a staircase scene in a hotel that mimics the train station climax from De Palma's "Untouchables", which itself was an homage to Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin". Of course, this could all be coincidence - the director of "Gangster Squad" could have just thought that stairways are cool, and he might have watched "The Untouchables" just once long ago and it affected this story on a subconscious level. That's not for me to say.
But the lead cop is a family man, there are minorities on the squad, and then a geeky guy joins the squad to get them the information they need. However, there's no analog in "The Untouchables" for the Sgt. Wooters character, so that's what leads me to "L.A. Confidential" - the fact that Wooters is dating a beautiful girl who's also dating a mobster leads me to think of Russell Crowe's character dating Kim Basinger's character, who was dating a bunch of them. Plus it's got Nick Nolte as the chief of police who authorizes the squad, and he led a very similar squad in "Mulholland Falls".
So I enjoyed the film, but points must be taken off for something so derivative. It's tough to find something new that "Gangster Squad" brought to the genre. Except maybe thousands of bullets flying from tommy guns without ever striking down one of our heroes...
Also starring Josh Brolin (last seen in "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger"), Ryan Gosling (last seen in "The Notebook"), Nick Nolte (also last seen in "The Thin Red Line"), Emma Stone (last seen in "The Help"), Robert Patrick (last seen in "Trouble With the Curve"), Anthony Mackie (last seen in "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter"), Michael Peña, Giovanni Ribisi (last seen in "Ted"), Mireille Enos, Haley Strode, with cameos from Jon Polito, Jack McGee (last seen in "The Out-of-Towners"), Holt McCallany.
RATING: 6 out of 10 fedoras
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